While Theresa Akaloo and Sarika Ramroop may be separated by many miles in different parts of the country, they share an affinity for the land and a connection with the earth in growing a staple of life that helps feed the nation—rice.
Theresa is the matriarch of the Akaloo clan, a name that is synonymous with rice growing in T&T.
Now semi-retired, she still handles the portfolio of marketing, finance and purchasing for the family’s 150-acre farm in Caroni, while the day-to-day operations are managed by her son, Ricardo.
Akaloo, 58, a grandmother of two, is known as the rice queen of Caroni.
Sarika Ramroop, 34, a mother of one, is the youngest and only other female rice farmer in the country and is known as the rice princess in her Plum Mitan community.
The two women have faced similar travails and hardships in their chosen profession as farming is still perceived as a male-dominated field in T&T.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian on Thursday, Akaloo said, “We faced many challenges, we started out with only $15,000 in 1989.
“We were not well known in Nariva. My husband, Ashick, and I had no credit rating with the banks.
“Over the years we proved ourselves to the banks building up a relationship with them and eventually they offered us loans.
“It was hard work from sun up planting and harvesting rice in the heat and checking the pumps to see if the fields were getting enough water at 10 o' clock in the night.
“We dried rice at home and on the road and now it's easier with a dryer now in the mill.”
She said the Akaloo family’s Island Grain rice that was recently launched was the culmination of 30 years of hard work and sacrifice by the family.
Akaloo, the firebrand vice president of the Trinidad Island-wide Rice Growers Association (Tirga) who fought for better prices for farmers and land tenure, said it was her brother-in-law Zahir Akaloo's dream to own a mill and bring the locally grown white rice to market.
She said it was up to the next generation, her nephews Zameer, Haseeb and Jaffar Akaloo, Richard Singh and her son, Ricardo, to take rice production in T&T even further.
When Akaloo was asked if she had any advice she would like to impart to Ramroop, she said as a young rice farmer or entrepreneur it was a good business to go into.
She said there were lots of rewards if Ramroop persevered, since the country needed food, especially in this recessionary period.
She said it was important to make use of new and emerging technologies and advice from the Ministry of Agriculture’s officers, and from chemical and equipment suppliers to make things easier.
Akaloo said she now gets up at 5 am instead of 4 am when she worked in the rice fields and spends more time with her husband Ashick, 71, and their grandchildren, Yusraa and Khadeem.
She said her husband was also retired but still gave advice to their son.
Akaloo said farming had provided her family with a fulfilling livelihood, the opportunity to feed the nation and to educate her three children.
Her son, Ricardo, 38, has a masters in agro-management; daughter Nadia, 32, is a cosmetologist; and Nabila, 25, is pursuing degrees in psychology and criminology at UWI.
She said it was a blessing in disguise when the Akaloos and 15 farmers were evicted from the Nariva swamp in 1996.
Akaloo said she was eternally grateful to former prime minister Patrick Manning for making it possible for them to be allocated agricultural lands in Caroni in 2004 which took them only 15 minutes to reach from their Cunupia home instead of three hours as was the case previously.
She said rice farmers still faced hurdles, however, citing the fact that NFM (National Flour Mills) paid them for their 2015 harvest on Wednesday but not for this year.
Akaloo expressed her heartfelt thanks to Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat who helped facilitate the farmers' payments and hoped it continued.
She said infrastructure was another challenge, because when it rained heavily, the dirt roads became impassable, turning into mud fields and damaging vehicles.
Akaloo said despite these challenges, in retrospect, she should have decided to leave her accounting job at the Ministry of Works sooner than her 30th birthday to join her husband to cultivate rice.
Ramroop: Continuing with father's rice legacy
Sarika “Rebels” Ramroop’s father, Krishna, used to plant 100 acres of rice in Plum Mitan, and now she continues with his legacy on her 30 acres of land.
She said her father used to be proud of his rice crop and other produce, he was a happy person and together with her mother, Anjanee, they loved planting rice.
Ramroop said her parents enjoyed bringing the harvested rice home to dry it for themselves, while she was learning to ride her bicycle near the rice under their house.
She said she wished her father was still alive to see how she was doing in the industry.
Ramroop said at the time she started, she didn't know what she was getting into, but now that she was in the rice business, she really liked it.
She said growing rice was stress free, even though it had its challenges, though most times she enjoyed planting rice.
Ramroop said she spent many long hours pumping water into her rice fields late into the night to prevent the loss of her crops to drought and to chase birds away from eating the rice.
She observed the insects in the field and learned to mix chemicals and fertilisers through trial and error and best practices from the Agriculture Ministry’s tutors. Ramroop said it was gratifying to see the produce one planted grow and flourish. She learned something new every time she planted a crop, she said, including lessons from her failures. She added that it was encouraging to see farmers packaging their own local rice such as the Akaloo’s white rice and Navet lagoon rice.
She said it was better for the country to buy and eat local rice rather than rice from other countries.
However, there were financial challenges for rice farmers. Ramroop said she was paid for her 2015 rice harvest on Wednesday by NFM but her 2016 payment is still outstanding.
She said right now farmers were in serious debt, and the interest on their loans kept going up.
She has two loan instalments to service for the month and she was owing the service provider for the use of his harvester and the chemical shops.
She said after her father died in 2014, she continued planting rice to honour him, and everything was going really well, until all of a sudden farmers were hit with non-payment of their crops by NFM. Ramroop said sometimes people would see a young girl in farming and she would hear negative comments.
Ramroop said it was her ten-year-old daughter, Kaylee, who was her ultimate motivation and made all the hard work worthwhile.